Small Business Resources / Business Retention and Expansion
Brighton has a strong heritage of community based businesses and headquarters as well as small business growth and development. Maintaining Brighton’s current business base as well as fostering new businesses in the community is core to the city’s economic success.
Context
- New growth and development has the potential to both help and impact current businesses in Brighton, it is important that the business community have an advocate to help it benefit from the cities growth
- Brighton’s entrepreneurs need access to information and training that will help their businesses grow without having to travel outside of the community
- Brighton has a strong core of primary employers that are critical to our community, it is important to maintain active relationships with those employers and address issues that may be impacting business growth in our community.
- There are a number of statewide and countywide retention programs that Brighton can leverage to implement a business retention and expansion program
2007 Tactics
- Formalize a relationship with the SBA to enhance the program including joint programming, locally certified SCORE counselors and other SBA services
- Conduct a business retention and expansion visitation program leveraging the retention programs established at the statewide and county level
- Conduct a needs analysis of current and new (start-up) businesses to assist in continuing to develop the program
- Work in partnership with the Brighton Chamber of Commerce to educate existing companies on business issues that may help them grow their companies
- Support the Downtown Initiative/BURA by providing training and support services for existing businesses
Measures
- Announce and implement programs with the SBA
- Visit 20 primary employers in Brighton during the year with the types and sizes of companies determined by the committee
- Conduct training seminars on three topics as identified by the committee during the year